HE Excavator shut his eyes and tugged at a tamarisk root. A cloud of grey sand fell over him, and the dry fibres came away in his hand. The Excavator sputtered and rubbed the sand out of the corners of his eyes. An edge of something was poking out of the ground. Very gently the Excavator drew forth a round thing, dark brown and green—a brass shield eaten by centuries of rust. The Excavator whistled and sat down in the trench.
On the long rocks of Bodinnoc the rollers broke with a roar. The wet Atlantic gale had beaten the tamarisks flat. A big-bosomed black cloud caught on the peak of Grantor; stinging down wind came the driven rain. The Excavator started up, and, hunching his shoulders, ran before it to his iron hut.
Laloo was crying. She sat on the smooth grey slate of the foreshore and hugged her magic stone of serpentine to her little bosom, but the magic of it would not stop her bruises aching, and she sobbed to the roar of the breakers. Her beaver-skins grew glossy and damp, and her long black hair was matted with the spray. Mistily through the spindrift and the whirling rain she saw the ocean rollers dash grey on the black rocks of Bodinnoc, rush up into the caves, and shoot out again white torrents of foam. And the sea and the wind shouted together in her ears. Laloo started up and stood full-face to the blast, her beaver-skins flapping about her, her black hair streaming behind. Laloo flung out her white arms and prayed to the west wind.
Such was the way of Rataw, her father, the chief. But indeed the west wind had not availed Rataw at the last, for as he lay sick in the hut by the sacred stone, Peraw of the broad shoulders had broken in his head with a hammer of flint, and thereafter flung him into the quicksand. Laloo was held by Peraw's sister to see her father slain; and Laloo had gone to the quicksand with him, but that she alone of the folk had the trick to bevel the eyes of the slate needles. So Peraw was chief of the beehive huts under Bodinnoc, and his sister beat Laloo because her skin was white.
The men of Bodinnoc, little dark-haired fellows among the sand-dunes, were coming home from a river hunt, for the day was darkening, and, with two blood-quarrels afoot betwixt them and the men of , they went abroad only in the light. Laloo should have been back with a skin full of dog whelks for Peraw's supper, and Peraw's wife was screaming for her. Peraw on his shaggy pony saw the girl with her white arms flung out to the wind.
“S—soo!” Peraw shouted, which means jelly-fish—which meant an insult, since if you are a jelly-fish you are not good to eat. “S—soo!” Peraw shouted, but his voice was fighting against the wind, and Laloo did not hear.
His brother Ammaw picked out of the sand a three-cornered piece of schist and flung it at her. It struck her head, and she staggered forward and fell on her hands, and the little men of Bodinnoc laughed heartily.
“An end of prayer magic,” said Peraw, and the little men laughed louder. For that was a jest of the chief.
Little five-feet-high men, shaggy with black hair and beasts' skins, they came skipping through the tamarisks, past the dark beehive huts, to have some sport with Laloo. Laloo had come to her feet again, and stood with her hand shading her eyes looking out over the grey travailing sea. Out of the west wind, out of the spindrift driving full for the black rocks of Bodinnoc, something long and low and black was cleaving the grey rollers. Tall, topped with fluttering gold, a form rose through the mist of rain and foam, then vanished into the waves. The black boat drove on before the wind to the rocks.
The little men saw it, and stopped running. “Prayer magic, prayer magic,” was muttered, and they spat to their left hands, where the demons lurk. Only Peraw went steadfast on, and his shaggy brows were drawn.